Customer Reviews

The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

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A great collection of 'howdunnit' mysteries. Murder most foul (the fictional kind of course) is made more fun for the reader when the crime was committed in an impossible manner. How did a fresh corpse end up in a coffin which has laid undisturbed for two decades? How did the murderer-thief escape from a 10th floor showroom that was constantly under observation (and with only one exit...guarded, naturally)?

Most of the short stories here were written specifically for this book but there are some great classics as well like "The Silver Curtain", "The Adventure of the Jacobean House" and my personal favourite, "Off the Face of the Earth" by Clayton Rawson.

I admire the authors who must have racked their brains to come up with ingenious, incredible, seemingly impossible yet logical solutions to their stories. The reader is challenged to solve it but amateurs like me just dont bother. I prefer to sit back and enjoy the ride.

As I write this, amazon.com has does not have ready copies of this anthology. Since its a UK published book, I advise potential sleuths to log onto amazon.co.uk. They have more copies of this book than they know what to do with!!

This book is filled with some great locked room mystery stories. These are always the hardest to solve, but the most satisfying to read. If you love a challenge, try to figure some of these out.

There is a lot of fun stuff here, at a good price. Unfortunately quite a lot of the book is original stories, and inevitably they are not as good as some classics not included. But if you like locked rooms, there is no reason to hesitate about buying this.